Monday, 21 April 2008

Thursday, 17 April 2008

The Newark Irregulars are off to Salute this weekend. As I may have mentioned before, James and I now take it in turns to organise the game each year. Last year was my WW1/BoB extravaganza dealing with Brits and Bolsheviks out East. See http://paintingshed.blogspot.com/2007/04/we-survived-salute-07.html for details and pictures from that game.

This year James is laying on a Warhammer Ancients scenario, the Battle of Haethfield (Hatfield). This is a 7th Century clash involving Anglo-Saxons and Welsh. Here is James's blurb:

Newark Irregulars present

The Battle of Haethfeld, 632 AD

Welsh and Saxons struggle forNorthumbria

“The sea rushes in. It cast forth a hostarrayed for battle –The host of Cadwallon in the triumph of his objective,An opponent like a furious fiery stag…The man wearing the brooch as herides in the front rank,Encased in gleaming iron…The image of a lordreturning in victory.”-Moliant Cadwallon (In Praise of Cadwallon)

The Battle of Haethfeld (modern Hatfield Chase, near Doncaster)was perhaps the greatest Welsh victory of the Dark Ages. The ruler ofNorthumbria at the time was “Good King Edwin”, Edwin son of Aelle, who hadbrought peace to his land through a series of successful military campaigns, and then converted himself (and many of his subjects) to the Christian faith.

Against him were arrayed the Welsh forces of Gwynedd and the Saxonkingdom of Mercia. The King of Gwynedd, Cadwallon ap Cadfan, had already been exiled from his homeland by the campaigns of Edwin, and thus had no love for the Northumbrian monarch. Returning and raising an army, he allied himself with Northumbria’s perpetual enemies, the Mercians. Under the fearsome King Penda, these pagan warriors marched into Northumbria in Autumn 632 AD. On the 12thOctober the armies met ‘on the plain called Haethfeld’, and the Northumbrians were decisively defeated. King Edwin was killed, ‘and his entire army slain or scattered.’

The Mercians soon returned to their homeland, but Cadwallonand his warbands remained in Northumbria and embarked on a year-long campaign of destruction. The great Welsh warlord was eventually brought to battle, defeated and killed at Heavenfield, near Hexham on Hadrian’s Wall, in 633.

Sounds good, doesn't it?

We look forward to chatting to any or all who drop by our table (GH05). Safe journey to anyone travelling down and enjoy the show! If you can't make Salute then the game will be on again at Partizan in May.

Below are some pictures that James has provided of troops recently added to his collection which will appear in Saturday's game.

Sunday, 13 April 2008

Fret not. Painting is still going on, just a bit slowly over the last few weeks. Everything will get back to normal once Salute is out of the way.

I have been planning furiously to see what needs doing on the terrain front. As I'd like to put on a really spectacular demo game next year I have found a way to do the huge battle of Wagram. This might involve a "L" shape table, so I'll have to aske the Warlords nicely if I'm to get this at Salute 2009. Wagram featured around 150-200,000 men on each side and should allow me to show just how spread-out a big napoleonic battle could be.

This does mean a little more painting is needed than would have been necessary for one of the earlier battles BUT I do get to field the army of Italy with some green uniforms.

I have ordered some plain polystyrene squares so building should be able to commence in the next week or two.

Thursday, 3 April 2008

We refought last week's scenario at the club yesterday. Lau again took the Austrians to try and improve on his previous outing, so I took the French.

Thanks to a better deployment and better than awful dice rolls we fought to a very close conclusion. I pushed Lau past his breakpoint, but he resolutely held the army together with rolls of 6 on three successive turns. As I was unable to break his army and failed to capture the ridge-line, a narrow win was the reward for Austrain tenacity.

The battle was a good one though and seemd poised to go either way throughout. The rules still held up well and we were all finished inside 2 hrs (12 hrs game time).

No game next week, due to rabbits (don't ask, all I can say is that Newark is a funny old place) so hopefully I can get extra painting done instead.

Good news yesterday. My copy of Napoleonic Wargaming for Fun arrived courtesy of ebay, so I can now relive my youthful days in the school library.

I also got John Gill's first 1809 volume for my birthday the other week. In a word, fantastic. In more words, highly recommended!

Links!

About Me

Member of the Newark Irregulars wargaming club since 1996, gaming since about 1984. I co-wrote the WAB supplement "The Age of Arthur" with my good friend James Morris. I'm interested in most wargaming periods but my favourites are AWI and Grand-tactical Napoleonics.
1 wife, 2 daughters, 2 guinea pigs.